The Wife Test Read Free

watching, just as she would soon stand at the convent gates and watch until the cart bearing them toward the English court was out of sight. Chloe, the abbess had just declared, was not destined to take such a journey. She would have to wave and wish the lucky brides “godspeed,” then return to her parchments and ink-stained fingers and to the drone of prayers and the bells marking the hours of the endless days. Chloe of Guibray was fated by the shameful circumstance of her birth to be caught in a vowless nether region of femininity … considered neither pious enough for holy vows nor pedigreed enough for marriage vows.
    The realization was devastating.
    She had always known that the questions associated with her origins set her apart somewhat from the covey of maidens tended by the sisters. But if her murky parentage had sometimes occasioned whispers and dubious looks, her strong personal qualities had earned her special opportunities … an education in Latin and letters; access to the convent’s precious books—even Holy Scriptures; and permission to be present whenever the abbess and her assistants met to entertain visitors or to make decisions. She had always believed that the extra training was meant to compensate for her lack of a pedigree and diligently applied herself to the learning.
    Her knees now buckled and she stumbled against a cool stone column. All of that study and extra work … they hadn’t been grooming her for a marriage, they had been sharpening her wits and skills to make her into something useful for the convent. A tool. Destined to give full and faithful service. A tool. Nothing more.
    It didn’t seem to matter to the abbess that a marriage into a real family, even one of modest means, was the abiding dream of her heart.
    Her early years at the convent, listening to girls speak of the homes and people they had been torn from, had bred in her a yearning for the deep and lasting connection of “family.” She had no memories or stories of her own, so she privately created some for herself, piecing them together from details of the families and homes she had heard described. But as time went by her curiosity about her origins outgrew that girlish pacification of her longings. Unable to satisfy her need to uncover that most fundamental of secrets—her parentage—she became driven to discover other secrets instead … any and all other secrets.
    In time, nothing in the convent escaped her … not the special ingredient the kitchen sisters put in their prized hot-cross buns at Easter, where the stableman slept when he went into the village, how many chickens the pot boy filched to take to his uncle, the various rivalries among the girls, the wine that old Sister Galletea sneaked to her chamber each night, nor the resentment the abbess felt toward Father Phillipe, who came each day to say their masses and hear their confessions. There wasn’t a secret in or about the convent that she hadn’t searched out and claimed as her own. And always she had justified her passion for secrets by keeping the tantalizing tidbits to herself and by Father Phillipe’s assurance in the confessional that learning another’s secret, even by subterfuge, was not an officially recognized sin.
    But when you listen at corners and window ledges and door latches, she told herself as she made her way from column to column along the cloister walk, sooner or later you’re going to hear something you wish you hadn’t. Whether eavesdropping was an official sin or not, she was being punished for it. To hear herself assigned a dismal fate and to be unable to utter the slightest protest …
    When she reached the small upstairs chamber she shared with one of the novices of the order, the misery she had been struggling to contain overwhelmed her. She collapsed on her straw-filled pallet and let the tears and sobs come until she seemed to run out of salt and her breath came in convulsive gasps. Hearing voices approaching her